Permian Pipeline System -- RBN Energy; Permian Now Exceeds 1.5 Million BOPD; Verizon All Over The News Today -- Not Necessarily Due To Good News

Active rigs:

	4/25/2014	04/25/2013	04/25/2012	04/25/2011	04/25/2010
Active Rigs	183	186	209	176	110

RBN Energy: Permian Pipeline system update --

The next six months look set to be quite turbulent for Permian Basin producers. Crude production is now over 1.5 MMb/d and supplies trying to get to market are facing congested pipelines leading to price discounts. New capacity is due online in June in the shape of the 300 Mb/d Magellan/Occidental joint venture BridgeTex pipeline. But many Permian producers are also awaiting the build out of gathering systems to deliver their crude to regional hubs in Crane, Midland and Colorado City where the major takeaway pipelines originate. At least a dozen of these systems are currently being developed. Today we start a new series on the build out of Permian gathering infrastructure.

Bakken pricing: a reader over at The Bakken Shale Discussion Group provided a new source for obtaining pricing for Bakken crude oil: Platts.

I think Platts still requires a subscription.

For those who do not have access to Platts, there might be two other places to find Bakken spot price:

http://hotlineprinting.com/oph/index.html

http://paalp.com/fw/main/default.asp?DocID=1363

The Wall Street Journal

John Kerry issues his "final" warning to Russia. The result? Ukranian forces quickly halted their advance after Russia activated the thousands of troops it has massed just across the border. I believe John Kerry is on the side of "the Ukranina forces" but he could flip-flop. The situation is fluid.

amazon tries its own deliveries. Amazon is testing its own delivery network for the final leg of a package's journey to consumers, putting it closer to same-day shipping.

Oregon "may" give up on health website. Based on the LA Times story, this was all but a done deal. Something like $243 million spent on this website and not one person was able to sign up for ObamaCare of whatever they call it in Portland.

Reid becomes GOP campaign fixture. Obama, Reid, and Boehner: has it come to this?

Affirmative-action ruling's reach is seen as limited. It will probably be the only thing talked about on David Gregory's "Meet The Press" this Sunday.

Let's see: we have media outrage over radioactive "socks" in the Bakken that have about as much radioactivity as a crate of bananas, and then we learn that the radioactive release at a New Mexico site was preventable. A radioactive release above ground during a February accident at an underground federal nuclear-waste repository in New Mexico was preventable, according toMr Obama's own energy department. I wonder if The Dickinson Press will publish that. Probably not.

A North Carolina judge has given two school districts temporary reprieve from part of a new law that ends teacher tenure, potentially upending the controversial policy a year after it was adopted by state lawmakers.

Didn't we just have stories of avocado shortages resulting in higher prices of guacomole dip. Now, it's a lime shortage that is putting the squeeze on margaritas. I would not have posted this note, but we have a lemon tree in California that produces so many lemons we have to give them away to local delis in the neighborhood.

This must be reassuring. Obama reassures Japan on disputed islands. That, and $1.87 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks on Glade and 121.

GE in talks to buy Alstom unit. I blogged about that yesterday. Don alerted me to the story.

This will get a stand-alone post. ObamaCare -- UPS will record a $1.05 billion pre-tax charge in the second quarter as it moves about 125,000 unionized package delivery employees off its own health-care plan and into multi-employer helath-care plans.

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Wow, ATT signed up something like 300,000 new subscribers this last quarter. I forget the number. Oh, I was way off. A million new subscribers. Who would have thought? I would not have posted that but I see the darling of Wall Street in telecom, Verizon, for the first time ever, lost cellphone customers.

From The New York Times:

AT&T added 1,062,000 wireless subscribers in the quarter. That includes 625,000 smartphones and tablets in “postpaid” plans. These are the high-value customers on contracts or long-term installment plans. Wireless service revenue grew 2 percent to $15.4 billion. Total wireless revenue, including phone and tablet sales, grew 7 percent to $17.9 billion.

From The Wall Street Journal:
Verizon Communications Inc. early this year lost wireless customers for the first time, as its rivals launched a bitter fight for new subscribers.

The U.S.'s largest wireless carrier said it lost roughly 138,000 net postpaid phone customers in the first quarter, a setback for a company that has steadily added subscribers in recent years. Verizon made up for the loss in phone customers by adding 634,000 tablet users. But the resulting net addition of 539,000 postpaid customers was eclipsed by the 625,000 added by AT&T Inc., the first time Verizon has added fewer customers than its rival since 2010, when AT&T still had exclusive rights to the iPhone. "To see Verizon actually losing phone customers is a shocking turnaround," said Craig Moffett, a senior research analyst at MoffettNathanson. "Verizon has been the growth leader of the industry every quarter since they got the iPhone (in early 2011)."

I talked about this the other day when I posted AAPL's earnings. Telecoms aren't making their money off tablets; they're making their money off smartphones with those expensive data plans.

Heard on the street: Verizon earnings ring up phone-subscriber losses:

For U.S. telecom companies, the first quarter has shown that even the mightiest can't stay dry amid a rising tide of competition.

Verizon Communications said Thursday it added a net 539,000 postpaid subscribers in the first quarter. That was better than analyst estimates. But it reflected a net gain of 634,000 tablets, meaning the No. 1 carrier by subscribers lost handset customers, the most lucrative kind.

Postpaid churn, a measure of how many customers leave, came in at 1.07%, compared with 1.01% a year earlier. Verizon's results come against a backdrop of increasingly aggressive promotions initiated by upstart T-Mobile US. These include its January pledge to cover fees other carriers charge to end a contract early. T-Mobile's efforts have targeted Sprint S and AT&T but the aftershocks have extended to Verizon.

And AT&T seems to have feasted at Verizon's expense.

On Tuesday, it said it added a net 625,000 postpaid subscribers of which 449,000 were tablets, meaning it added more handsets in the first quarter than in all of 2013. While both carriers reported better wireless-services margins—52.1% versus 50.4% a year earlier for Verizon and 45.4% versus 43.2% for AT&T—the latter's margins were likely aided by the way it accounts for new plans that separate phone and service costs. Without the benefit of these new plans, which account for more handset revenue up front, margins would have fallen to 41.8%, according to New Street Research.

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Apple plans another large debt sale. A year after it pulled off a then-corporate record $17 billion bond sale, Apple's plans to raise a "similar" sum this year highlight strong investor demand

The Los Angeles Times

Verizon Wireless sells out customers with creepy new tactic.
As far as corporate notices go, they don't get much creepier than this recent alert from Verizon Wireless.

The company says it's "enhancing" its Relevant Mobile Advertising program, which it uses to collect data on customers' online habits so that marketers can pitch stuff at them with greater precision.

"In addition to the customer information that's currently part of the program, we will soon use an anonymous, unique identifier we create when you register on our websites," Verizon Wireless is telling customers.

This identifier may allow an advertiser to use information they have about your visits to websites from your desktop computer to deliver marketing messages to mobile devices on our network," it says.

That means exactly what it looks like: Verizon will monitor not just your wireless activities but also what you do on your wired or Wi-Fi-connected laptop or desktop computer — even if your computer doesn't have a Verizon connection.

The company will then share that additional data with marketers.

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Just how liberal is the LA Times? This is not an op-ed. This comes under something the LA Times calls "analysis": Judge Sotomayor gets it right in Michigan racial preference dissent. I don't think they use racial preference in California any more for University of California, and Hispanics now outnumber "whites" at UCLA. I think Asians outnumber everyone at UCLA. I stand with Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr.  The court's ruling was not even close; Ms Sotomayor was on the losign side 6-2.